


for whom I bore such pain

by Scytale



Category: Rapunzel (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Gen, Revisionist Fairy Tale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-12 20:04:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15347655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scytale/pseuds/Scytale
Summary: Rapunzel visits the witch's garden one last time.





	for whom I bore such pain

My mother's garden is beautiful. Cabbage and lettuce sit in tidy rows. Tomatoes hang heavy upon the vines, and the orange trees stand as tall as a man. Their fruit is sweet to the taste.

Every day, my mother tended the garden, weeding and watering. No plant kept secrets from her. If a leaf was wilted or spotted, she would divine why. She could name any plant you showed her by the shape of its leaf, tell you its uses and preferences. 

"This one," she would tell me, "cannot tolerate too much sun. That one is shy and needs space apart from the other plants." She would laugh, pressing a kiss to my cheek. "Not so different from you, my flower."

My prince waits outside the garden.

They are already writing songs about how he defeated the witch and freed the songbird from her cage. He tells me those songs will be sung at our wedding. When I asked him to let me have a moment alone in the garden, he smiled, his eyes shining with benevolence.

"Of course," he said. "I'm sure you want to see where it all began."

To him, this is the place where a thief traded a child to a wicked witch for a handful of rampion. This is the symbol of everything he has freed me from.

But I am not the one trapped in a tower of my pride.

The afternoon sun warms my cheeks. Around me, the bees sing their buzzing hymns. I inhale the air, sweet with the scent of my mother's garden. In my mind's eye, I conjure up the sight of her. Not as I last saw her, before the prince placed the final stone that entombed her in the tower, but as she was here, skin baked nut-brown by the sun, crows' feet around laughing eyes.

"One day, Rapunzel," she used to tell me. "This will all be yours."

There are darker things in my garden, plants that can bring death or summon magic. I walk past the wolfsbane and the mandrake until I reach the nightshade shrubs, their branches hanging with clusters of purple berries. I pluck enough for what I need.

Then I go greet my prince.


End file.
